Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
by Mary Roach
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Book Reviews of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Book Review: GREAT READ...GREAT DIET PLAN!
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow, what can I can say...a nauseating look into the use of cadavers throughout history and today. The book caught my attention within the first few pages, mainly because of the gory detail that disrupted my lunch hour. However Roach works miracles as she portrays the advancement of technology and healthcare through the use of the dead in a way that is non-offensive and lightly humored. At times I even found myself chuckling out loud as I read.
The book was very informative on several levels. I had grown up in a monument shop and so death is nothing out of the ordinary to me. Throughout my years I have heard all there is to hear about the ways of death but have never really thought about the options of the deceased outside of organ donation and having the local sexton plop you 6 feet under. This book brought to light several different uses of cadavers. Many of these uses are hard to think about and sound gruesome; but then, many have help advance medical procedures, forensics, and auto safety.
Not only does Roach touch on the bodies donated to science, but also vividly writes about the decomposition of a body of a typical American burial. It made me question why Americans are so uptight about death and why we are so anxious about what happens to the body. I have often wondered why people are so set on embalming, spending a fortune on a watertight caskets and sealed vaults only to be returned to the earth. I find it interesting that funeral directors never say, "Microbial activity will take action no matter how much embalming fluid you pump into a body". Roach brings up several ethical issues that have good arguments for both sides. Why have parts of your body dismantled when you can rest in peace? Why decay in the ground when you can still have a place in society?
Overall this is an excellent book that is both informative and comical. It's not for the light-stomached, but after you get in a few chapters the interesting facts overdo the descriptions.
A great weekend read!
Book Review: Nervous Humor
Summary: 5 Stars
Fans of the HBO series "Six Feet Under" will recall that Lisa's niece Michaela kept trying to give this book to David, the funeral director. I had been vaguely aware of this book when it came out 2 years ago but my interest was rekindled when the 4th season of 6FU was released on DVD this summer.
The connection with 6FU is apropos. Both share a morbid fascination with and a nervous humor about death, and both are wildly entertaining because they skirt the bounds of propriety.
One more television comparison: on the Discovery Channel series "Mythbusters" they use a crash test dummy, nicknamed "Buster," for many of their human endurance tests. Other tests involve firing bullets, hard drive fragments or CD-ROM fragments into fake human torsos constructed of ballistic gelatin. So I had some familiarity with "cadaver stand-ins" in the testing of human limits.
But Mary Roach isn't interested in stand-ins. She goes straight for the real thing, the rogue scientists who use real dead people for experiments. It's a subject rarely spoken about, barely acknowledged by the body donation establishment. Not all cadavers end up in dissection labs for budding surgeons.
Roach's tone in the book, as other reviewers have noted, is irreverent without being disrespectful. The cavalier attitudes sometimes adopted by trauma nurses in order to deal with stress seem somehow inappropriate when dealing with the already-dead. Nothing can hurt a corpse further -- and yet there's a cultural, or perhaps evolutionary reluctance to desecrate the newly departed. The irony is not lost on Roach.
This is a fast and fascinating read, reminiscent perhaps of Perri Klass's work or her fellow Discover Magazine medical columnist, Jeffrey Kluger. Roach imparts quite a bit of science and research arcana by keeping it light and chatty, and I did not find her humor annoying or out of place. In fact, it's the perfect lubricant for making a difficult subject morbidly entertaining.
Book Review: Curious Humor of a Cadaver Author
Summary: 4 Stars
Yes, yes, it's an entertaining and engrossing read on the curious lives of cadavers. While reading this book, I realized the reason I haven't really thought about what happens to my body when I die was, well, I didn't want to think about the messiness of decomposition, cremation, or however way my body will be disposed of.
Mary Roach tackles the science of death, and in the telling makes it seem remarkable and yet a completely natural thing. Her detailing and investigation of this complex subject matter are impressive - from corpse donation to help further scientific research on death and saving lives to yes, human dumplings.
Equally absorbing is the exploration of the questions of when life ends, where the soul resides in the body, the politics of different scientific experiments on the deceased (where the family has no idea how the dearly departed's body is being used and is better off for it), and the evolution and acceptance of new methods of corpse disposal.
For these reasons and for her hilarious recounting of grave robbery in the name of science and easy work, I could begrudgingly give this book four stars. But because I had read much about Roach's marvelous sense of humor and respect for her subjects, I expected to laugh out loud while admiring her deft touch. Who doesn't appreciate a sense of humor served with discussion of cadavers? Well, I did laugh once or twice, smile a few times, but by the end I was consistently rolling my eyes back...and hard...in exasperation. I could have done with far fewer "dry wit" and "pithy observations." By Chapter 5, Roach's narrative started to sound like she was writing (and running out of) material for her stand-up comic routine. Enough with the droll one liners!
I've recommended this book to friends and family, but have already forewarned them - and not just about the graphic nature of the content.
Book Review: What Really happens when you donate your body...you'll be Surprised!
Summary: 5 Stars
This book, though dealing with death, is an extremely thorough and very interesting read. Roach reveals the truth in this book of what Really happens when we opt to donate our bodies after death. As most people I assumed that my organs would be donated and possibly sent to a med school for medical students...in some cases that is true. But in most cases that is far from the truth. Some of it may sound gruesome but the intentions, in most cases, are good.
In many cases the corpse is cut into pieces, from head to limbs and sent all over the country for study purposes and not so much for donations. We've all seen those 'crash test dummies' the U.S. auto manufacturers use but did you know that they all use dead bodies for their testing...it is the only way to get the true results of different crash results of what happnes to a body whether the car is hit head on or by the side, etc. This is used in the study of bones broken, organs damaged etc., nothing that a dummie could give the true results of. Also put on body farms to study all kinds of ways a body decomposes to help in murder investigations determine factors in murder cases. The most disturbing thing I found is that Heads, just the head of a corpse may be sent to med students studying how to give face lifts, etc. The information I've given you is not a spoiler to this book but just a beggining to let you know what really happends to a donated body.
Roach is very thorough in her writings and writes well. To me this wasn't written to frighten or scare you but more to tell you of the true and bizarre events that occur to the donated corpses. The majority are for very good reasons. Somehow Roach is able to write this book and actually make it enjoyable with the subject matter. If you are a forensics buff this is the book for you!
Book Review: Despite tedious and desperate humor attempts, an interesting overview of human corpses
Summary: 3 Stars
Of course, the title had me... I could not resist picking up a book with such a cover, and the repulsive allure was simply too strong. I had no idea what to expect, and the introductory paragraphs soon had me hooked.
The book deals with a variety of issues regarding human corpses - from how we decompose (do not read this chapter before going to sleeep, as I did) to various aspects of cannibalism, to plane crash investigations, to organ donation, to the promotion of human composting. It is an interesting account of the author's morbid curiosity about death; however, after a while the tone of the narrative became quite off-putting due to the insistence of presenting everything in a funny one-liner sort of way. Yes, a couple of times her musings were funny, but more often the side remarks just made me cringe and roll my eyes...
Also, the chapters are quite uneven. The cannibalism chapter just seems to ramble on and actually turns quite tedious with numerous unsubstantiated claims that may or may not be true according to the author. The head chapter I found quite interesting - even though the descriptions of animal experimentation were quite revolting. The chapter on cruxifiction was a waste - especially since the author herself seemed too preoccupied sneering at anyone who would be interested in this topic.
As a matter of fact, she often came off a bit condescending towards the people who helped her out - be it morticians, surgeons, lab personel or scientists.
All in all, however, it was an interesting overview of the physical state of the human body after death. I remain curious about several aspects of the accounts, and I am likely to finally pick up the classic "The American Way of Death" by Jessica Mitford, to which the author refers several times.